President Obama's West Wing power trio

The photograph occupied one of the most prominent spots in the White House this winter, drawing double takes: President Barack Obama, papers in hand, sitting on an Oval Office couch flanked by his three top West Wing advisers on national security.

Text Size

Women Rule: West Wing edition

WATCH: Kirsten Gillibrand at Women Rule

For a president long dogged by criticism that his White House is a boys club, the image placed at the entrance off the West Wing driveway subtly attempted to reshape the notion.

Obama and his closest advisers have tried for years to shake that reputation, sometimes clumsily. And the perception persists, both inside and outside the White House, stoked in large part by the dominance of men as the president’s spokesmen, golfing partners and advisers. One infamous photo of 10 male aides in the Oval Office from 2012 didn’t help, either.

But the case of National Security Adviser Susan Rice, counsel Kathy Ruemmler and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco — the three women on the couch — offers a unique counterpoint to the argument that only men carry influence in the Obama White House.

The trio sat for a rare joint interview with POLITICO last week to discuss the frat house rap, gender dynamics in the White House, the value of playing sports with Obama and their relationship with one another.

Nobody in the West Wing outranks them on national security issues, marking the first time that women have occupied all three positions in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field. Rice and Monaco are the ones who wake up Obama when something bad happens overnight. Collectively, the three women handle the most sensitive issues that cross the president’s desk — including the administration’s drone policy, military actions and the review of government surveillance techniques, which was the topic of discussion when the photograph was taken.

“The notion that this is an all-male place is a joke,” Rice said, pointing out that women occupy half the seats at the senior adviser meetings. “I’m always struck by the disconnect between perception and reality.”

Sitting in Ruemmler’s corner office suite, the three women argued that the boys club is a myth. None thought a Saturday morning on the golf course or basketball court would advance them in the White House. And, together, they pinpointed what they view as the root of the perception problem: Men just get out front more.

“There are certain gender dynamics in the world that are also true here,” Ruemmler said.

Ruemmler said she had to be persuaded to do the interview, underscoring her point that women, more so than men, tend to shun the spotlight. Somebody who didn’t work in the White House, Ruemmler said, asked her recently why she wasn’t better known, given that she’s served longer than her predecessors under Obama.

“That, I think, is the general philosophy for most of the women here and that is just consistent with the way, to be candid, most of us were raised,” Ruemmler said. “It is about doing the work, getting the work done, and the work will speak for itself.”

Rice chairs meetings in the Situation Room, where the people around the table are mostly men, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and CIA Director John Brennan. But she said she’s generally not conscious about her status as one of a handful women in the room.

“I don’t think about it,” Rice said. “Most of the folks around the table are men, although, thankfully, it’s changing a bit. The issues are the challenges, not so much the gender dynamics. I certainly don’t have the time or the bandwidth to give them much attention. You’ve got to do what you got to do when you’re chairing those principals meetings. That’s the last thing I’m thinking.”

But Ruemmler and Monaco, who are often in those meetings as well, said they’ve noticed a change in the dynamic since Rice took over last year. The debate is more rigorous, less scripted, with people around the room — at the table or on the back bench — weighing in, they said. Rice will tell people what she thinks of their ideas no matter who they are, they said.

“It’s intangible, but it feels like more of an open dialogue,” Ruemmler said.

The boys club image took hold during the 2008 presidential campaign and the early years of the administration, when Obama’s inner circle brimmed with fist-bumping young guys, sports-obsessed aides and brash leaders like top economic adviser Lawrence Summers. There were influential women, such as confidante Valerie Jarrett and advisers Alyssa Mastromonaco and Melody Barnes, but none was as visible on TV or the White House Flickr feed as David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs or David Plouffe.